Player’s guide

Connect 4 Strategy Guide

Connect 4 takes a minute to learn and a long time to master. Every disc falls to the bottom of its column, so a move does two things: it takes a square, and it decides which square becomes available above it. Strong players think about the second part as much as the first. This guide covers where the game came from, how to build threats, and how to get a game going here.

Play Connect 4 Read the rules

01 · Connect 4

A modern classic, solved by computers

Four-in-a-row games are much older, but Connect 4 as a vertical grid of seven columns and six rows was published by Milton Bradley in 1974. Dropping discs into a stand turned a pencil-and-paper idea into a game children could play and adults could study.

In 1988 two researchers, James Dow Allen and Victor Allis, independently showed that the first player can always win with perfect play by starting in the center column. In practice that matters little: nobody plays perfectly, and the second player wins plenty of games.

02 · Connect 4

Start in the middle

The center column is part of more possible lines of four than any other column, so discs there are worth the most. Columns next to the center are the next best. Discs on the outer columns can only take part in a few lines.

Take the center column early, and keep stacking there when nothing else is urgent.
Build horizontal and diagonal lines through the middle; vertical stacks are easy to see and easy to block.
Before every move, look for a line of three your opponent could complete next turn.

03 · Connect 4

Threats and double threats

A threat is an empty square that would complete your four. A threat that can be played right away must be blocked; a threat higher up the board waits until the column fills to it. Most wins come from a double threat: two places to win at once, so your opponent can only block one.

Shapes that create two threats at once are worth looking for. Three discs in a row with both ends open is one. Two lines that share a square, so that one disc completes a three in each direction, is another.

Never play directly under your opponent’s threat. Your disc fills the column up to their winning square, and they drop in on top to win.

04 · Connect 4

Odd and even rows

Late in the game, when the board fills up, timing decides who has to give way. Count the rows from the bottom, one to six. As a rule of thumb, the player who moved first wants their waiting threats on odd rows, and the second player wants theirs on even rows. When the other columns are full, play in the last column alternates in a way that tends to hand those squares to the right player.

You do not need to calculate this exactly to use it. If you have a threat on a row that suits you, avoid filling the columns around it and let your opponent run out of safe moves.

05 · Connect 4

Playing Connect 4 on LarkSpark

You can start a game on the Connect 4 page without an account. Play against one of eight bots, from Altair at level 1 to Orion at level 8. The lowest levels drop discs at random, the next ones block and take obvious wins, and from level 5 up the bots search further ahead with each level. Orion rarely misses a double threat.

To play a person, pick an online match, or sign in and open a private room to send a friend a code. Your recent results are listed on the game’s stats page.

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